WNWO new management team to build better content, community

Aimed at enhancing the on-air product and increasing community involvement, WNWO-TV has made changes to its top level management. Five employees, all from Fort Wayne’s Granite Broadcasting Corp., recently came to Toledo in a move made by WNWO’s owner, Sinclair Broadcast Group. Sinclair purchased WNWO from Barrington Broadcasting Group in 2013.

Lead anchor Jim Blue will transition his news director duties to newcomer Nicole Hahn, currently in the newly created position of assistant news director. Blue’s new title will be managing editor and lead anchor. John Nizamis, one of the five employees from Fort Wayne, has been named general manager, replacing Chris Topf.

Nizamis, who has worked in television sales for 30 years, said that in a market of Toledo’s size it is rare to have a lead anchor also serve as news director.

“In a sense, most anchors have that managing editor responsibility,” Nizamis said. “They’re really leading the charge on what they’re covering. The news director is much more of a management position because you have to worry about hiring and firing.”

In other changes, Charity Freeman was named general sales manager, replacing Sena Mourad-Friedman. Freeman served as the local sales manager for Granite, as well as an on-air local program host. Two other positions have been added, including Jason Ashmawi, promotions manager, and Emma Ashmawi, digital content manager. Both previously worked for Granite in producing and Web content management, respectively. Granite operates several Fort Wayne stations, including WPTA-21 (ABC), WISE-33 (NBC), Fort Wayne’s CW and MYTV Fort Wayne.

Nizamis said he realizes WNWO trails far behind in local ratings, but said the new faces are here to deliver more than numbers.

“It would be far too ambitious to say that we want to knock (Channels) 13 or 11 off the throne,” Nizamis said. “As long as we’re fighting the good fight, we’re going to be in good shape here. It goes beyond the ratings. First of all, it is a business. If we can increase ratings, we have an opportunity to increase revenue.

I’m trying to establish a new morale. I want them to walk with a new swagger. We want to be relevant. This is a good product in a good market.”

Nizamis said the station is also planning to add eight more positions – such as on-air talent, producers and photographers.

Sinclair group manager Dan Hoffman oversaw the switch in personnel, and said he wanted changes with familiarity.

“I wanted to bring in a team that all knew each other and worked together,” Hoffman said. “This was a matter of getting a group of people together. They all have the same hymnal. They get it. They know what they have to do.”

Active involvement in the community is a big part of what Hoffman wants them to do.

“We’re going to do well by doing good,” Hoffman said. “We’re going to get involved in the community, and put a product out that everyone can be proud of. I want my anchors to be out in the community, to serve on boards. We want to make a difference in the communities we serve. How can we help the communities that are viewing us? Can we be at their schools? Absolutely we can, and we want to.

It’s going to be required if you come and work for us. I’m not saying they didn’t do those things (before), but we’re going to do it at a whole new level. If they don’t move the needle, we’re going to at least give people a really good product.”

Nizamis likes what he he’s seen so far

“I have absolutely loved it (here),” Nizamis said. “I moved in Downtown, and it’s just, just awesome. I feel the energy. People here have been terrific, which is cool. Toledo should be proud of that, and I love what I’m seeing over on the riverfront. I’m jacked. This station can only get better; we’re excited about it.”

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OPINION

Topf: A message from WNWO to Buckeye subscribers

If you are a Buckeye CableSystem subscriber, no doubt you have noticed that Buckeye is no longer carrying WNWO (NBC).

Perhaps you have also seen some of Buckeye’s advertisements and statements attempting to portray this event in emotional terms, denigrating the top-notch news professionals that strive every day to keep you informed and placing blame on WNWO and its owner for Buckeye’s failure to provide this popular station to their subscribers.

Frankly, as the general manager of WNWO, I believe all of this overdramatic rhetoric and name-calling by Buckeye is neither relevant nor productive and thought you would prefer to understand what is really going on here and what you can do to have input into the situation.

Quite simply, this is nothing more than the failure of parties to a business negotiation to reach agreement on the price to be paid by Buckeye for the right to carry WNWO and resell it to its subscribers. No different than, for example, a grocery store negotiating with a food manufacturer over the price to be paid for a product they would like to include in their store for sale to their customers.

Although Buckeye would like you to believe that the price we are asking is too high, based on the price they pay for much of their programming – not just the local stations, but also the cable channels they carry with far fewer viewers than WNWO – we think the pricing is very fair.

Broadcast stations in Toledo account for around 50 percent of all television viewing, but it is estimated receive less than 10 percent of the amount that cable companies like Buckeye pay to acquire programming. We don’t think this is right and are simply asking to be paid closer to the amount that we deserve based on the popularity of our programming. Buckeye apparently disagrees and while we certainly respect their right to do so, the facts simply don’t support their position.

As a WNWO viewer and a Buckeye subscriber, you probably don’t want or need to know the details of these private negotiations. What I believe you do need to know, however, is that just like a grocery store has competitors, so does Buckeye. In this case, those competitors are AT&T U-Verse, Dish Network and DirecTV. Each of those companies provides a similar video product to Buckeye, often for less money. And, significantly, each of Buckeye’s competitors is carrying WNWO. Apparently only Buckeye thinks the price being charged by WNWO is too high.

Buckeye wants you to blame WNWO for its failure to carry the station. I, however, am not asking you to blame anyone. Rather, I am simply asking you to decide if you are willing to remain a customer of Buckeye even though they now provide a clearly inferior service.

WNWO brings you some of the most popular programming on television: Sunday Night Football, NFL playoff games, “The Voice” (which returns in February), “The Biggest Loser,” the 2014 Olympics (which begin in fewer than 50 days), not to mention our live, local news. You can watch this programming on U-Verse, Dish and DirecTV, but you cannot watch it on Buckeye.

I hope you value our programming, even if Buckeye Cable does not. Ironically Buckeye has been telling you about ways to get some of WNWO’s programming even if they aren’t carrying it. But do you really want to watch the programming on your computer rather than your television and do you really want to watch programming tomorrow that your friends are watching today? Buckeye correctly notes that other ways to get WNWO exist, but the best way is to simply get it from one their competitors. Not surprisingly, this is something Buckeye fails to mention.

I would like nothing more than to reach agreement with Buckeye, but it doesn’t appear that is going to happen, and I apologize for the inconvenience that you are suffering due to Buckeye’s failure to carry WNWO.

I have been asked by many people what they can do to impact the situation and the answer I give to each of them is to contact Buckeye and let them know that you value WNWO and its programming. It is that simple. Let Buckeye know that you will NOT continue to subscribe to a service that doesn’t carry one of the most popular channels out there.

I am not suggesting that you should blame Buckeye for any of this, just that you should let them know that you will not remain as their customer when they no longer have a product — WNWO and its top-notch programming — that is valuable to you and available from all of their many competitors.

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Morning anchor Abby Powell Turpin leaving WNWO

Abby Powell Turpin, anchor/writer/producer for WNWO’s morning show, has ended her contract with the station early.

Abby Powell Turpin

Turpin will be moving to Lincoln, Neb., where she will be anchoring, reporting and producing at Gray Television’s KOLN, the No. 1 station in the market.

Turpin’s husband, Travis Turpin, is from Lincoln and the couple got married there last year.

Turpin has been at WNWO since last summer, after working in Texas. She grew up near Columbus.

In an email to Toledo Free Press, Turpin said she regrets that she is breaking her contract, but called the decision “a dream move.”

“My husband and I have been working to land in a city where we have family. My husband’s family is in Lincoln, and we also got married in Lincoln. It is a great college city where we look forward to raising our family,” Turpin wrote.

“I have enjoyed my year as the morning anchor and producer at WNWO. I regret in some ways leaving this contract early, but the decision to buy out my contract was an easy one for me because I know it will be worth it in the long run to be in a city with our family and at such a great, established station. I’ve met many talented fellow journalists here in Toledo, and I hope WNWO will someday become a great force in the market under the new Sinclair Broadcasting management. My thanks to all of the viewers of WNWO Today for their support and well wishes.”

WNWO staffers Brittany Patterson and Nick McGill have been filling in for Turpin until a new fulltime anchor is hired, said Chris Topf, president and CEO of WNWO.

“The station is sad to see her go, but we understand this is a dream move for her and we wish her all the best going forward,” Topf said.

Topf said he hopes to announce a new hire within a few weeks and have that person on air by mid-July.

Initiative aids local charities fighting hunger

Several local groups are partnering to combat one of the biggest issues facing Northwest Ohio — hunger.

Columbia Gas of Ohio, Toledo Free Press, WNWO-TV and Moms on the Go have joined forces for the Free from Hunger initiative. The yearlong initiative supports Food for Thought, Feed Lucas County Children and Cherry Street Mission. Major sponsors include Hollywood Casino Toledo, Wells Fargo Advisors and WSPD.

“It’s a really interesting approach to take a yearlong look at this because to a certain extent, it’s hard to combat something as large as hunger. … How do we start to do that?” said Chris Kozak, communications and community relations manager for Columbia Gas of Ohio. “We’ve picked three good partners who are having a strong impact now and our goal is to help them have an even bigger impact.”

The initiative was partially inspired by startling statistics: More than 85,000 Lucas County residents are “food insecure” and 35 percent of them are children younger than 18. One out of 10 of those children is younger than 5. More than 30,000 children in Lucas County live at or below the poverty line.

“How does Lucas County address issues such as education and economic development if it can’t feed its people?” said Michael S. Miller, editor in chief of Toledo Free Press. Miller, who collaborated with Kozak on the initiative, said, “It’s an overwhelming situation, but there are people devoting their lives to helping alleviate the crisis and we want to bring as much awareness and as many resources as we can to contributing to the solution.”

Each charity will have a season of spotlight during 2013. The initiative seeks corporate sponsors to donate $5,000 each and aims to get those funds matched by the public through events put on by the charities.

All funds are being maintained by the Toledo Community Foundation. Food for Thought is the first spotlight charity, followed by Feed Lucas County Children (FLCC) and Cherry Street Mission.

The first initiative event is 7 p.m. March 23 at Forrester’s on the River. “Bachelor” Bob Guiney is set to perform along with Scott Grimes. Tickets are $40 to benefit Food for Thought. A second event where local restaurants will show off their take on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches is set for May 23. More details on that event, which will feature wine/beer pairings, is forthcoming.

Sam Melden, executive director of Food for Thought, said, “One of the things about the Free from Hunger campaign is I think it really represents the next wave of raising money and community support. It really represents organizations with influence teaming up to say, ‘Let’s focus on this issue.’”

Food for Thought, which started in 2007, runs its stationary food pantry at 3540 Seaman Road, Oregon. It also has a mobile unit that it takes into its three-county wide community.

“We have about 12 food pantries a month — everything from rural and more urban churches to family centers,” Melden said.

He stressed the importance of partnerships to Food for Thought.

Melden

“It’s definitely not like an ice cream truck where it just pulls into a neighborhood and pulls out,” he said. “Really what we want to do is we partner with other organizations and we kind of become their food pantry.”

“The idea with that is we aren’t going to assume we can be more engaged with somebody’s community than they already are and that’s served us well.”

The charity also emphasizes serving food with thoughtfulness — meaning eye contact counts as much, if not more, than full stomachs, Melden said. This means a simplified check-in process for patrons and letting them shop more than once a month.

It also means creative spins on projects like Art for Thought, where professional and amateur artists alike can decorate lunch bags. That program is run out of The Art Supply Depo in Downtown.

Art for Thought is mainly meant for school art classes and afterschool programs. However, Melden said, “Everyone from kids the youngest age that can pick up a crayon to the most incredible artist in the city can take a bag and decorate it.”

Food for Thought is also currently working with the Northwest Ohio Food Council to help provide healthier options to food pantry patrons. This means community gardens, cooking classes and themed recipes based on the pantry’s inventory.

Melden said that an increase in funds could mean expanding the types of food offered at pantries and maybe taking a potential partner organization off the waiting list. He also said that more volunteers are always needed. To sign up, visit http://feedtoledo.org.

FLCC and Cherry Street

Tony Siebeneck, executive director of FLCC, and Dan Rogers, president of Cherry Street Mission, both said that the awareness that the Free from Hunger initiative could bring to the issue is especially crucial.

FLCC, which prepares meals in its kitchen and then serves them throughout the community to hungry children, started in 2002. Last summer, it served its millionth summer meal.

The summer meal program is receiving accolades, Siebeneck said.

“We’re receiving a lot of calls from in-state and out-of-state organizations that are wanting to learn more about our successful food model. … That’s keeping us kind of busy,” he said, adding that his nonprofit is also gearing up for summer.

Rogers said of the campaign, “No question about it. What this does for Cherry Street is keep it in the forefront of our community.”

Cherry Street has provided food, shelter and other goods to the needy since 1947.

Rogers stressed that food is a stabilizing force in people’s lives.

“Hunger is distracting. Anything that’s distracting stands between us and where we want to be,” he said.

Rogers is aiming to purchase 100 chickens to provide Cherry Street with more eggs and also to vastly increase its two urban gardens’ produce.

Like Rogers and Siebeneck, Kozak said that awareness is a big part of the initiative.

“Awareness is the first step to [helping]; finding out what the need is; finding out it’s not something happening in a different state, in a different country; finding out there’s people in Toledo just down the street that are hungry that your kids may go to school with,” Kozak said.

Moms on the Go

Moms on the Go — Lisa Harst, Allie Darr and Molly Pearson — film a weekly family segment for WNWO-TV. The group has helped several charities since its inception last year.

“Basically every month we were picking a new charity and decided our efforts would be better spent,” Pearson said, adding that the statistics and facts they learned about hunger made the decision to get onboard obvious.

“It kind of pulls at your heartstrings and being moms ourselves, the thought of not being able to feed your children three meals a day or even one is heart wrenching.”

Darr agreed.

“Personally, I’m a mom of three little boys and the thought of me not being able to feed them is very emotional for me,” she said.

Pearson said even if you can’t come to a specific event, donations to the charities are still encouraged.

Chris Topf, president of WNWO-TV, said that the station always looks for ways to make the community a better place.

“I want everybody to take this seriously and get involved. For the amount of money you might spend for going out to lunch, you can feed a family for a good long time,” he said.

For more information, search for “Free from Hunger” on Facebook.

‘Bachelor’ concert benefits Food for Thought

By Michelle Zepeda

It’s a chance to rub elbows with celebrities and enjoy an intimate concert, all while raising money for an important Lucas County charity.

On March 23, Bob Guiney, one of the most popular bachelors from the ABC show “The Bachelor,” and Scott Grimes, an actor from NBC’s “ER,” will take the stage in Toledo. The concert benefits Food for Thought, a social justice organization dedicated to feeding the hungry with a mobile food program.

“We are really hopeful people will come out,” Guiney said. “They are trying to raise as much money as they can for Food for Thought and hopefully people will see the value of that and come and hang out with us.”

Guiney and Grimes teamed up about a year ago. They tour together and play a many charity shows.

“We are doing it for causes that we believe in and causes that we think the money is really going to go to a really good place,” Guiney said. “Plus, it’s an advantage because he is my best buddy and we get to hang out and play music together and all the while we are doing something good for someone else.”

Bob Guiney

Guiney and Grimes met after playing in Band From TV, a group of actors that has a passion for music and charity. They tour together and all the money raised at their shows goes to the actors’ favorite charities.

“It’s been the most rewarding thing because we do it all for charity,” Guiney said. “We have raised $3 million for charity during the past seven years.”

But with so many actors’ conflicting schedules, it’s hard to tour often, so Guiney and Grimes started their own band.

“What actually ended up happening is Bob and I were itching all the time to keep performing,” Grimes said. “So we said, ‘While we are on break, let’s do a very scaled down version of Band From TV,’ which ended up being something more original than Band From TV, because we don’t just do cover songs. We do our own stuff.”

Guiney added, “We were itching to play more and were anxious to put our creative minds together more and write some more real songs. Because Band From TV is more about playing cover songs, and we love that, but we both had the desire to get up there and play our own stuff too.”

Guiney’s TV career began when he was an eligible bachelor not chosen by Trista Rehn (Sutter) on the 2003 season of “The Bachelorette,” before taking the lead on “The Bachelor.” He has hosted several TV shows, including HGTV’s “Showhouse Showdown,” as well as contributing to “Today.”

“My whole life, before I was on ‘The Bachelor’ or anything, I signed a record deal and I was a musician,” Guiney said. “I played Toledo several times. I was in a band called Fat Amy, which we started back in 1991 and started touring with bands like The Verve Pipe, Matchbox Twenty and The Smoking Popes.”

Grimes was also a songwriter and solo artist before his acting career took off in movies like “Robin Hood” and TV shows such as “Party of Five,” “Band of Brothers,” “ER” and his voice work on “American Dad” and “Family Guy.” Both have a collection of original work they play at their concerts.

Scott Grimes

“We play our own original music that we played before we met,” Grimes said. “But we’ve noticed that accidentally we’ve changed our own stuff to combine what he loves and I love. The music that I’ve written before I met Bob is kind of changing as we sing together and has changed into the music that him and I sing together.”

Both men said the show will have people dancing to the music.

“We are a couple of guys with guitars who bang out a bunch of fun songs,” Guiney said. “There are a bunch of songs you will recognize, there are some songs you might recognize from back in the day that got a lot of radio play like my song ‘Girlfriend’ and Scott’s song ‘Sunset Boulevard.’ We like to mix songs that we like to play and the crowd likes and keep things moving and have some fun with it.”

Grimes added, “There is no pretentiousness about it; it’s nothing but fun. People are welcome onstage anytime. It’s a good old-fashioned pub show even if we are playing at a giant place. It’s really intimate and anything goes.”

The event is part of Free From Hunger 2013, a yearlong initiative spearheaded by Columbia Gas of Ohio, Toledo Free Press, WNWO-TV and Moms on the Go and supported by Hollywood Casino Toledo, Wells Fargo Advisors and WSPD. All the money raised at the Guiney and Grimes concert will benefit Food for Thought, a social justice organization dedicated to feeding the hungry with a mobile food program. The concert will be at 7 p.m. March 23 at Forrester’s on the River in The Docks. Tickets are available online at http://store.feedtoledo.org and are $40 each.

“What we are doing for Food for Thought and Moms in Heels and these events in Toledo is awesome because instead of just sending a check from a show from a thousand miles away and hoping it helps, we are actually raising awareness,” Guiney said.

In addition to raising awareness, this concert is a homecoming for Guiney. He is a Detroit native who worked in Toledo years ago, for a phone book company.

“I love Toledo. There were some great restaurants and I even worked in Bowling Green for a while,” Guiney said. “We are very excited. I’m excited to introduce Scott to some people in the Midwest. We will give them a great show and shake hands and meet people and have a lot of fun.”

Blue returns to Toledo as WNWO News Director

The 60-year-old veteran newsman, who was an evening news anchor at the station from 2002-08, anchored his final 10 p.m. newscast at WFFT in Fort Wayne, Ind., on Jan. 18, moved back to Toledo that weekend and started work at WNWO on Jan. 21.

A day and a half into his new job, Blue said he has not only been re-acclimating to the Toledo newsroom he left four years ago, but also meeting staff, interviewing candidates for open positions and brainstorming ways to boost the station’s viewership. On Jan. 23, he debuted as co-anchor with Angi Gonzalez on the 6 p.m. weekday news.

“It’s just been very busy,” Blue said. “I knew we had a lot to do.”

On Jan. 22, Blue recounted how he had walked out of the restroom earlier that day and caught himself heading toward his old desk.

“It was like I had never left,” Blue said.

Blue left Toledo after WNWO didn’t renew his contract in 2008, but he said he holds no ill will toward the station.

“There’s no point to that,” Blue said. “At that time, all of broadcasting was in quite a recession and this station was no exception. Although I can’t speak for the management, I’m quite sure it was a cost-cutting move. It was just a very, very difficult financial time for all broadcasting stations and in a lot of ways stations were cutting off limbs in order to save the patient.

“It didn’t come as a surprise, although I would have preferred that it had not happened,” Blue added. “We all had to make difficult choices.”

Blue soon landed a job as news director and 10 p.m. news anchor at WFFT, but said moving to Fort Wayne while his wife, Kay, an English professor at Owens Community College, stayed behind in Toledo was hard. He commuted home on weekends.

“A lot of folks sacrificed (during the recession) and so did Kay and I, but it allowed both of us to continue in our respective careers and a two-hour commute is, while not a pleasant price to pay, certainly less difficult than what some other folks were forced to do,” Blue said. “Now that things are looking quite a lot better for Toledo and the economy in general, this is just a really great time to be back here.”

Jim Blue on the set at WNWO.

Planning to move

Blue said he had been planning to move back to Toledo even before he heard about the opening at WNWO.

“After four years of really very satisfying and enjoyable professional work there in Fort Wayne, it was still taxing personally to be separated from Kay for the majority of the week,” Blue said. “I realized I was going to have to make a decision to come back and I was fully intending to make that move not knowing what kind of job might await me here, if anything. And then, just serendipitously, this position opened up.

“I feel very, very grateful and humble about being able to continue doing this business in the community where I want to live,” Blue said. “We’ve maintained our home here. Our kids grew to adulthood here. Most of our friends are here or in the region. So we have really solid roots in this community. It’s home and it feels very much like home.”

WNWO President and CEO Chris Topf, who has been with the station since 2011, called Blue a “pivotal addition” to the news team.

“In Jim you’re getting an on-air talent that people want to watch and you’re also getting someone who knows how to develop and groom a news organization,” Topf said. “He was very successful with that in Fort Wayne and I expect that with the group we’ve put together here, Jim will be instrumental in making them better journalists and making us a better news organization.

“Jim being paired with Angi at 6 o’clock is going to be a great duo,” Topf said. “We’ve spent a lot of time over the past year and a half trying to get the right people in place at this station. We’ve got a lot of very solid pieces in place and we want to build on that. I think Jim’s going to help bring together all those pieces we’ve brought together and make them one big fighting force.”

Tough market

WNWO, Toledo’s NBC affiliate, consistently draws the fewest viewers among the city’s major news outlets, according to data gathered by the Nielsen Media Research Co.

According to the most recent numbers, released in November, WNWO drew an average of 2,000 viewers to its 5 a.m. newscast compared to 13,500 for WTVG and 8,000 for WTOL. WTVG also has the most viewers at 6 a.m. with 30,000. WTOL was next with 21,000, while not enough people watched WNWO to measure.

WNWO’s evening newscasts also lagged behind WTOL and WTVG, drawing an average of 5,000 at 6 p.m. and 4,000 at 11 p.m., compared to WTOL’s 68,000 at 6 p.m. and 48,000 at 11 p.m. and WTVG’s 64,000 at 6 p.m. and 42,000 at 11 p.m.

“There has been so much change at this station,” Topf said. “It’s gone through so many different ownerships and each time there’s been a completely different philosophy and a full change of personnel to go along with it, so it becomes tough for people to come to know and love the people you’ve got on air and want to watch them on a regular basis.

“Midsize markets like Toledo are very tough markets to keep good talent. [WTOL and WTVG] are lucky to have people like Chrys [Peterson] and Diane [Larson] and Lee [Conklin], who have made Toledo a home for themselves. A lot of times people will quickly move up in market size and you become the station that’s a stepping stone to other things. I’d love to have somebody who is going to be here for a long time.”

Both Blue and Topf feel the Nielsen rating system, based on a small sample of regional viewers self-reporting viewing habits in hand-written diaries, is antiquated.

“We utilize another rating service called Rentrak and we have seen that our audience has grown a little bit over the past year, year and a half,” Topf said. “It’s not tremendous growth, but it is growth nonetheless. We think that having somebody with Jim’s experience and expertise can only help us grow and probably at a quicker rate than we have been.”

Blue said ratings are important, but he doesn’t like to dwell on them.

“If expectation is simply based on the past, you’re never going to go anywhere,” Blue said. “You’ve got to be willing to defy expectations. The past is not necessarily a prologue when it comes to the ratings and we proved that in Fort Wayne.”

‘A great leader’

Blue helped build and launch the news operation at WFFT, formerly a FOX affiliate and now an independent station.

“We started it up from scratch in seven weeks,” Blue said. “It was fascinating. It was very challenging. It was a lot of fun. It was quite an opportunity to start something up and create something really out of nothing. Hire a staff, build a set, have all the equipment installed. It was very gratifying.”

The show, which debuted in 2009 as a 35-minute weeknight show, is now an hour-long nightly newscast and has risen to the No. 2 slot for late local news in the Fort Wayne market, Blue said.

“He’s got sharp news judgment, great instincts and a strong moral compass,” Reynolds said in a news release. “On top of that, he knows this market and as an anchor can put stories in context and explain their impact on our viewers.”

Blue said balancing duties as news director and anchor is not difficult.

“I’m glad to see there seems to be a trend to going back to somebody with overall responsibility for the news product also appearing as the face of the news product,” Blue said. “There’s a public perception that if people see someone on the air they expect that person has a good deal to do with the creation of that product, that they aren’t simply a talking head, and in our case it’s truly a reality. I think people can respect the integrity of that.”

Blue said he hopes to provide a fresh, independent voice.

“A lot of it is simply the basics,” Blue said. “Do good journalism, report accurately and fairly and tell the stories well. People relate to narratives. Whether they are doing news, weather or sports, I want us to be good storytellers, meaning tell people’s stories well and accurately and fairly.”

Social media

Blue will also continue to make social media a focus.

“Providing news over multiple platforms is a very important part of what we do,” Blue said. “It’s the way people get their information these days. They use what’s most convenient for them and they will use multiple platforms during the day.”

Blue was an engineering major at the University of Illinois, but changed his major to communications after spending a summer working for WBBM Newsradio in Chicago.

“It exposed me to a lot of very interesting things and places,” Blue said. “We covered the first Mayor [Richard J.] Daley, the Black Panther Party. We covered a lot of things in Chicago that were fascinating of that era. It was an exciting time to be in Chicago and an exciting time to cover news in Chicago.”

Having worked in television since 1974, Blue said he can use his decades of experience to mentor younger journalists and draw more viewers to WNWO.

“I can provide coaching and feedback in terms of creating, writing, shooting and editing their stories. I also can provide some context for what news is important because I’ve experienced this market over a decade and I have a fairly good sense of what Toledoans consider important,” Blue said. “I feel confident we can shape this into a very, very valuable and worthwhile experience for the people who watch us.”